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Jonathan Willis is a freelance writer. His work regularly appears at the Nation Network, Sportsnet and Yahoo. He's co-written three books and worked for myriad websites, including the Edmonton Journal, Grantland, ESPN, The Score, Bleacher Report and Hockey Prospectus. He was previously the founder and managing editor of Copper & Blue.

The Pittsburgh Penguins found themselves in an untenable position this week. The 2017 Stanley Cup champions had a choice to make. They could tour the White House and meet the President of the United States, as previous winners have done, thereby enraging his many vocal detractors. Alternatively, they could skip the event, provoking the same…

Over the offseason, the Calgary Flames have revamped their goaltending and shored up their blueline. The forward corps, on the other hand, is largely unchanged—and the changes that were made had more to do with subtracting pieces to make room for prospects, rather than adding proven talent.

With each passing day, the NHL season looms ever closer, and with it the need for the league’s 30 member clubs to trim their rosters down to 23 names. Friday was, once again, a busy waiver day, with a few interesting options hitting the wire.

After yesterday’s craziness – everybody cleared, which means 30 NHL general managers are confident they have a better backup goalie than Reto Berra and a better seventh defenceman than Mark Barberio – today’s waiver wire is a little quieter. It is fairly rich in defencemen, though, including 346-game NHL veteran Clayton Stoner.

It is a particularly busy day on the NHL waiver wire, which features at least one NHL-caliber forward, defenceman and goaltender. Most teams still have a lot of bodies in training camp, but the names on today’s list have to be tempting.

We’re still waiting for real hockey games, but there won’t be a dull day off the ice between now and the start of the NHL regular season. Monday kicks off another week and another batch of players for the waiver wire.

Canada and “Europe” are both bound for the playoff round of the World Cup, but that doesn’t make this final game of the preliminary round meaningless. The winner finishes the group segment with a perfect record; the loser draws Sweden in the semifinal. It’s a game worth winning.

With the preliminary round out of the way, the 2016 World Cup of Hockey is ready to get down to the contests that actually count this weekend. Group A will feature the marquee matchup of Canada vs. the United States, along with the less-heralded Czech Republic and Team Europe. Here’s how those countries stack up.

With the news yesterday that Rogers and the NHL had agreed on a 12-year, $5.232 billion Canadian television deal, the overwhelming reaction was uncertainty. We don’t know how this will effect TSN or CBC, we don’t know how Rogers will cover the game, and we don’t know if the hockey-watching experience will be better a…